What is abortion? Abortion is the “deliberate termination of pregnancy by killing the unborn child. Such direct abortion, willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.”[i]Abortion is an intrinsic evil.

What is intrinsic evil? Intrinsic Evil is an act that is always sinful, never appropriate or acceptable, and is never okay in any place, situation, or time. Never. There is no grey area at all. Intrinsically evil acts are always evil everywhere, for everyone, and for every situation. They are always sinful and never ever acceptable. What are some examples? Rape[ii], self-abuse[iii], lying[iv], contraception[v], and Abortion[vi]. There are other things, such as war and capital punishment, that are bad but can be morally permissible given certain circumstances. These are addressed in other lessons in this packet. Abortion is an intrinsic evil because it is the direct killing of an unborn child, and there is never a reason to directly kill an unborn child. If we better understand what abortion is and why it is an intrinsic evil, it can help us understand that this is black and white. That the “what if’s” are poor excuses an attempt to kill an unborn child.

Why is the Catholic Church against abortion? The Church follows the law of God and the fifth commandment is “Thou shall not kill”. Jesus Christ reiterated this “You shall not kill”[vii]. From the beginning of the Church’s establishment, she has always seen abortion as a grave sin. The Didache in the first century said, “You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.”[viii]

We also see that at the moment of conception, this is a human person with an eternal soul, who bears the image and likeness of God. “God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”[ix]

Isn’t the fetus just “a clump of cells” or a “blob of tissue”? If we want to be technical here, we are all “a clump of cells” even outside the womb. We are all a growing “blob of tissue”, even outside the womb. Using those words help those that are for abortion because it dehumanizes the fetus. Remember, at the moment of our conception, we have our eternal soul. Biologically, we also have our D.N.A. Our D.N.A. (Deoxyribonucleic acid) is unique only to us, and it is the blueprint of exactly who we are and what we grow into. Whether we are a few minutes past conception or a few minutes past our birth, we have these things and are to be respected since we are a creation of God. Lastly, we were all once a small clump of cells too but were allowed to live. Every unborn child deserves that same chance too.

A great question to ask anyone, who is on the fence about abortion, is “What is a woman pregnant with?” The answer is of course, a baby! We could take any five or six year old child, point to a noticeably pregnant woman, ask them the same question, and they would say “a baby!” The follow up question is, “Do we kill babies?” The answer is always no.

What if the woman’s life is endangered? There are very rare cases where a mother is pregnant and her life is endangered, i.e. when the fetus implants on the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. If left un-intervened, the baby will grow and burst the mother’s fallopian tube, causing the mother and the baby to die. In these cases, the doctors and remove part of the fallopian tube. This would not be considered a direct abortion. What’s the difference? The purpose of the surgery was not for the direct killing of the child. Yes, having the surgery may result in that, but it was not the intention. This would be an indirect abortion, and the Church does not see it as a sin.

Another example is if a woman is pregnant and finds out that she has cancer. The doctor gives the mother two options. The mother can go through with chemotherapy to treat the cancer, but due to the treatment it is likely that the baby will die. The second option is that the mother can choose to wait on chemotherapy until the birth of the baby. In this case the baby will live but the mother will have to wait on the therapy necessary to save her life and because of this she could die. The Church teaches that in this case it is up to the mother. If the mother did decide to have chemotherapy, it would not be a sin, even if the mother were to lose the child. Again, the reason is because the chemotherapy was to cure her cancer, not to directly kill the child. Saint Gianna Molla and her husband were given three options during her last pregnancy. Of the three options, the first two would result in the death of her unborn baby; the third would secure the life of her unborn child, but was the riskiest choice for her. Saint Gianna and her husband chose the third. The direct killing of the child, “however serious and tragic, can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.”

What about abortion in cases of rape or incest? Even in cases of rape or incest, abortion is not permissible. We must realize that conception from a rape is rare, but does happen. We must first tend to the woman, who has been a victim of a horrible crime. We must get her help physically and psychologically. Then, we must look to find the man who did this and bring him to justice. It is not the child’s fault that he or she was conceived in this situation. There is a story of woman, who was raped and was pregnant. She went to a crisis pregnancy center and spoke with a counselor. The woman was deciding whether or not to abort the baby. The counselor pulled out his wallet with two pictures of two different babies. He told the woman that one baby came from a woman, who was raped, and one from happy, loving married couple, and he asked the woman, which baby came from which situation.. The woman obviously could not tell him which baby came from which situation. Rape is a horrible thing, but killing the child will not make the rape go away. In fact, women who were raped and had an abortion later said that they had that feeling of rape all over again. While the act was sinful, the life that comes from it can be God infusing grace and making a miracle out of a tragedy.

Isn’t it the woman’s body and her choice? The choice of killing the child in her womb is a choice not of her body, but the body of the unborn baby. As Pope Paul VI wrote, “Respect for human life is called for from the time that the process of generation begins. From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother. It is rather the life of a new human being with its own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already.”[x]

The “choice” is being made upon this helpless unborn child. “The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenseless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defense consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby’s cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb. And yet sometimes it is precisely the mother herself, who makes the decision and asks for the child to be eliminated, and who then goes about having it done.”[xi]